Friday, February 11, 2011

Kenyon Tops Chicago 6-3

Most of yesterday I was thinking that I was stupid for picking against a team that has 6 4-stars, 2 3-stars and 3 international players in favor of a team that boasts no 4-star players. It's almost like a curse at this point. Play on the Chicago Men's team = lose all the abilities you had to win in junior tennis. This match was never close and my hat goes off to the Lords for doing what they had to do to win. Apologies to Kenyon, but to me this is much more about Chicago underachieving year after year and digging themselves into early season holes. They've done it again. Marty Perry needs to sit down and figure out what is going on here, because obviously something is not right. A team with this talent in the hands of Roger Follmer is top 5 in the country, because he would not allow this to happen. It's almost like Chicago was completely unprepared to play at 3 of the 6 singles spots as well as #1 doubles. OK, so Kenyon can win the match, but I think even the Lords would agree they shouldn't be blowing out Chicago, and this is exactly what happened. The Maroons never had a chance in this one and I almost feel dumb for overestimating Chicago year after year. If there's any piece of good news for UChi, it's that it is only February and they do have chances to rebound, although with 6 spots and so many teams in the running, they will really need to pick up their play to qualify for the tournament. Their first few matches certainly were an indication that they just aren't that good. They played like a team who should not be in the top 20 last night, even though the quality of their roster screams top 10. I don't know if they are so arrogant that they don't care about winning, but they are wasting their time practicing tennis every day if they are going to perform like this in matches. It's become laughable at this point, and Kenyon made them look terrible last night. I underestimated the Lords, and if last night was any indication, they can play with anyone in the country. On a final note, Chicago needs to regroup for Denison today, because if they lose, which they clearly can, they may as well not play the rest of their season.